Top Expat Countries To Relocate To In The World And Gulf

The Gulf is an ideal location for many expats. Due to its warm climate and tax-free income, it provides a lifestyle many associate with a holiday spot.

The saying, “live where you would holiday,” could not be more true than the Gulf, with plenty of wonderful countries that provide this idilic lifestyle, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait to name a few.

But how do they stack up among the other top expat destinations in the world?

According to the InterNations Expat insider survey of 2015, Ecuador, Mexico, Malta, Singapore, Luxemburg, New Zealand, Thailand, Panama, Canada and Australia were rated the top 10 expat destinations, a survey that ranks countries by different factors such as the quality of life, personal finance, working abroad and making friends.

However, some of the top Gulf destinations were also included, with 3 countries positioning in the top 25.

Oman ranked 24th in the world in the same survey and unsurprisingly, the UAE ranked highly at 19th. Surprisingly, coming two places higher than what many would assume to be the number one destination is Bahrain, ranking at 17th.

The main trump card Bahrain had over the other Gulf countries was the Family Life Index, where it ranks best out of all GCC states (19 out of 41), and especially in the Ease of Settling In Index, where it also comes first among the GCC countries (7 out of 64).

If you are looking to move abroad with a young family, Bahrain was by far the most desirable out of all the Gulf nations.

Interestingly, although the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar did not rank among the top 10 countries for expats, they did surprisingly rank better with women than with men, the survey showed.

Despite the rankings, Saudi Arabia and Egypt performed well in respect to hiring activity with an increase of 32% and 38% respectively.

Bahrain came in as the third top performer for the month of April 2015 with an increasing of its online recruitment activity by 27% compared to 2014.

All other expat destinations in the Gulf had a positive year-on-year hiring trend apart from Kuwait which saw a negative hiring trend compared to 2014.

Check out the Year-over-year Hiring Growth for the past year below:

Year-over-year Growth

Apr2014

Apr2015

% Growth Y-o-Y

Egypt

138

190

38%

KSA

113

149

32%

Bahrain

113

143

27%

Qatar

126

149

18%

Oman

102

118

16%

UAE

103

119

16%

Kuwait

144

125

-13%

If you want more information or need assistance moving to one of these locations, upload your CV to our database and be assigned a personal job hunt manager who will help get your CVs in front of the right people.